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Over at the Big Blog, they're weighing in on the pseudo-debate over whether laptop users who camp out at coffeeshops are a rising tide with the unemployment rate that threatens to swamp coffeeshops who'd prefer their tables be used by paying customers for a more reasonable amount of time.
The spark to the argument was an article in the Wall Street Journal that alleges, "Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables -- nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours -- and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading."
"Of course, the larger story is hardly new. Shops have been struggling for years to keep hang-around laptop users in check without angering some of their most loyal customers," writes Monica at the Big Blog before suggesting it could all be hype.
We agree that the idea that this is "new" and owed primarily to the economy is all b.s., but that doesn't make it any less an irritating trend. It's nearly impossible to find at seat to have a 30-minute chat with someone at Vivace on Broadway, Victrola on 15th, or Top Pot (nearest this writer's place) on Summit, because most of the tables are taken up by laptop users sitting all alone.
And it's become a rule of thumb that even if we do find a seat, by the time we leave those solo laptop monkeys are still going to be sitting there. For all the talk of "coffee culture" here in Seattle, coffeeshops are really little more than fake offices for people, which makes them feel like a soulless office to everyone else. Seriously, go join frickin' Office Nomads and get the hell out of our way.
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Co-sign! And I say that as a former and occasional coffee shop laptop monkey. I can't count the number of times I've walked into Victrola and seen the five or six 4-top tables all in use by a single laptop user.
I make my living writing about roots music, which translates to not enough expendable income to pay to join something like office nomads or buy myself an office. I also live alone and work, on average, 12-13 hours every day. Neither of these statements are me whining - you probably know I love my job more than almost anything else in the world - but they're truths. And I reckon I'm not alone in that. So, yes, I'm going to take myself to a coffee shop and work there because it means I get to see other human beings sometimes. I'm not there unemployed surfing the net, but I don't care if other people are. Coffee shops are public places and I believe people should be able to do what they want in public if they're not harming other people.
Often, I'll even schedule time with someone else who works from home to meet up and co-work at a coffee shop. We'll order food, have conversation, a couple of drinks over the course of a few hours. We earn our keep.
You've made a silly sweeping generality here, claiming people on laptops are unemployed slackers or, if employed, could actually afford (or be interested in) buying an office. I'm no sooner going to give up the job I love to make a larger paycheck than I am going to decide I'll just forego human contact for a week because my presence working and drinking coffee in a coffee shop that offers wifi and coffee may annoy someone who's there to read a book or have a conversation or knit or do any other thing people do in coffee shops.
Also, coffee shops have long been meeting places for artists and intellectuals. Writers have written novels in them, poets have created masterpieces, bands have formed, and on and on. This goes back even as far as the Reconstruction. Those guys who made the coffee house an institution back in the 1800s would have engaged in their discourse on laptops if they'd had them to use. I promise you.
Also the headline is dumb. As if people with laptops in coffee shops don't have lives. As if, Jeremy! It's like saying "Shoes v. People with toenails."
Wow! This topic is like dogs in public places or bicycle issues: people get ticked off!
Look, are you in the coffeeshop alone or with others? If you arrive alone, do you camp out at a table for more than one and set up shop? Are you there to do the work on the laptop or to socialize? Come on. You know what I'm talking about--someone sitting with ear-buds in at a table for four for a couple hours. That's not cool, and frankly it doesn't sound like what you're talking about, anyway.
As for the coffee culture thing...cafe intellectuals and whatnot...there's a couple points I'd like to make about that. First of all, most people went to those cafes to socialize, not work alone. Second of all, if you read any memoirs from the golden era of writers in Paris and whatnot, you'll note they were always being hassled for trying to claim a spot for a couple hours by ordering the cheapest thing on the menu; in other words, this sort of behavior has always been frowned on by most establishments. And third, a crucial point that's being missed is that in Europe, it's more common to join strangers at a table. If I walked into Victrola and saw 16 people sharing four tables as they ignored the world around them, I wouldn't be writing this piece. You go there some time and tell me if people ask to share a table with someone else before they search for an empty table to occupy.
Finally, this comes down to what the establishment wants. Plenty of them have problems with this behavior, too. Many don't. All I'm saying is, Victrola, Vivace, both got nice coffee, both I avoid like the plague. Sorry. Hope you're spending for me.
It's simple human nature for people to take an empty table first, if there are any, before doubling or tripling up--at least in this country, anyway. Just like seats on the bus. Not that I haven't seen selfish people taking up multiple spaces laptop-ing or reading hard copy or knitting or whatever, but I've also seen plenty of people, strangers even, sharing. The way I figure, it's incumbent on the new-comer to ask and on the person already there to graciously share.
I'm not convinced it's some sort of laptop epidemic as much as it is a problem of people spending perhaps too much time occupying a seat during busy periods. This goes for people buying a short drip and chatting for over an hour about their latest post-post-modern theory as much as it does for the loners on laptops. Or for the loners who sit there for half a day writing touching poetry in their Moleskines. Singling out laptop-ers and wi-fi abuse is just a smokescreen for people to vent spleen about tough economic times.
I have to say that as a grad student, I get bored of studying at home by myself all the time. I go to coffee shops for the unspoken camaraderie of having other students near by. I am however, respectful of others space and confine myself to a one-person sized space. I am always happy to share tables (again, thank God there is someone else suffering through this quarter).
I think if coffee shops really want the lap-top "junkies" out, then they should just cut their wi-fi. That would sure cut down on their computer users. I know Diva Coffee for one took this route and now there are rarely computer-users there.